


In which Bang is entertained

by Overlord_Bethany



Series: Poison in Paris [7]
Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, I wrote half of this while feverish, Paris hijinks, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-08 20:41:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13466151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Overlord_Bethany/pseuds/Overlord_Bethany
Summary: Because boring is bad





	In which Bang is entertained

Bangladesh DuPree lurked in the rafters of the lecture hall. Of all of this entire weird Paris gig that Klaus had given her, she hated this part the most: the lurking, the waiting, the staying silent and unseen. Far below, Professor Whineynose droned on about something super unimportant, and a bunch of students scribbled notes just as fast as they could write. 

Gil sat in the front row, of course, because he had arrived on time. He scrawled that incomprehensible shorthand of his, and probably filled the margins of his notes with diagrams that had nothing to do with this class. Boooorrrrrinnng. The class, the notes, all of it. If someone hadn’t been trying to kill Gil lately (again), DuPree never would have followed him to class. She cast about for a source of entertainment. 

The back row of seats only had one occupant. Prince Squealy had skulked in a little late, sporting a shadow of a black eye and a faint odor of smoke. That guy needed to learn to stay out of trouble. Anyway, he sat all alone with no witnesses nearby, which made for a pretty temptation. And was this pirate one to resist temptation? Hah! Not on your life, buddy. 

Quiet as a cat, DuPree crept to the rear of the lecture hall. There, she reclined along a beam and watched her prey. He kept his head down, his attention focused on his notes. His penmanship was swift and precise—snobby—and DuPree wanted to spill ink all over the page just to watch him go all blotchy about it. She had no ink. Instead, she drew one of her daggers and she gave it a loving caress. 

She held the blade vertical, point down, and she enjoyed the play of the faint light along the steel. Below her, Squealy never looked, never appreciated the fine craftsmanship on display. Such a waste, really. 

DuPree released the dagger. 

The blade  _thokked_  into the surface of the desk right beside Squealy’s hand, which he had just moved to turn a page. Bad luck. He seemed to look at the dagger, but then he went back to writing notes. He never even looked up. Sparks are so weird. DuPree held another dagger at the ready. She would not miss again. 

An instant after she released the second dagger, Squealy sat back and rubbed the back of his hand across his bruised eye. The dagger quivered harmlessly beside the first one, and Squealy again returned to taking notes. 

Refusing to believe that the same rotten luck could strike twice, DuPree tried again, this time extending her arm to release the blade above Squealy’s shoulder. As it fell, he leaned over to pick up his bag. The dagger struck the chair right beside him. 

_He’s doing this on purpose!_

Half annoyed, half gleeful, DuPree dropped two daggers at once. Squealy evaded both without making any movements out of the ordinary for a busy student. Did Gil even know his weird friend was this interesting? At this rate, she would run out of daggers before she ever drew one drop of that beautiful blood. 

DuPree settled down to watch, scrutinizing Squealy for even the smallest sign of awareness, the tiniest upward glance. Nothing. He kept writing his boring notes in his snobby handwriting, his head bent over the page as though in deepest concentration. What a fraud! DuPree took another dagger and positioned it directly above that conspicuous red head of his. She counted to five before she dropped it. 

Squealy leaned to the side again, but not far enough. The blade skimmed over his shoulder before it stuck into the chair. He did not even flinch, instead drooping to prop his chin on his hand. Well  _that_ wasn’t normal. DuPree squinted. His penmanship had gone loopy and lopsided. Something was definitely off here, and it wasn’t just the fact that he had made most of her daggers disappear. 

DuPree looked around. The rest of the students looked similarly listless—worse, actually. Professor Whineynose leaned against his desk, frowning at them all. Gil’s head had snapped up, and he glanced around the room. He started up from his seat, then sank back with an expression of confusion. In a moment, he would make a second attempt. That gave the pirate in the rafters about forty seconds to discover what was having this weird effect on everyone below her. 

She forgot stealth as she raced for her exit. After all, what good was remaining inconspicuous if it meant giving up bragging rights? She vaulted through the maintenance hatch, tumbled into the ventilation system, and burned herself on a stack of whitish blocks. 

Oh. What a disappointing answer. What a dull, mundane, insufferably indirect way to try to kill someone. 

DuPree kicked the dry ice away from the vent. She ran around the maintenance pathways, and she found more dry ice at every vent into the lecture hall. Some lazy coward thought they could get away with suffocating  _her_  Wulfenbach? Hah! She laughed at the idea. 

When she had cleared the vents, she rushed back around to the front door, where she found Gil dragging out two students and the professor. He looked flushed and, to be frank, a bit like overdone sole. DuPree looked at the students. Not Squealy. Well, she couldn’t let someone that interesting die. DuPree ducked inside to collect him, along with her daggers. 

She found Squealy still conscious, though weak and uncharacteristically willing to let her help him up. He fumbled to find his feet. She helped herself to his bag, which clattered with ill-gotten blades. Bangladesh DuPree liked that in a person. 

“Have you ever considered piracy?” she said when she had dragged him into the comparably breathable air of the hallway. 

Squealy muttered something that might have been Polish and sounded rude. He had hidden depths! Now if she could just get him to curse in a language she understood better…

DuPree rummaged the bag and reclaimed every dagger, even the ones that hadn’t been hers to begin with. The books and notes she dropped at Squealy’s feet. She gave him a swift jab to one arm, for dodging. Then, with a cheeky wave, she trotted off to make sure Gil didn’t die trying to save the rest of the class. 

In the end, no one died, and Professor Whineynose decided to cut the lecture short for today. A win all around. When DuPree briefed Gil on the dry ice in the vents, though, she fumed about it. 

“When we find that lazy coward,” she said, pacing and punctuating her words by gesturing with a dagger, “I’m going to skin him, slice him into strips, season him, and smoke him into jerky. Then I’m going to feed that jerky to Squealy and watch him turn all green and blotchy when I tell him what it was.”

“No good,” Gil said, proving that he had inherited from Klaus that dismal quality of being both a spoilsport and a funsucker. “You’ll never get Tarvek to eat jerky.” He dusted his hands on his pants, and he stood up from investigating footprints. “Come on. We have work to do.”

Yes, yes, work now, reporting to the Big Cheese later. Hopefully some carnage in between. Looping her arm through Gil’s, DuPree cheerily announced that she refused to give up on the jerky, and he sighed and shook his head at her. 

Life was good.


End file.
